Religion Blog

Shortly after teenagers beat up a Columbia University physician on Saturday, a Muslim woman was
attacked a few blocks away.

It wasn’t clear whether the attacks on Dr. Prabhjot Singh and the Muslim woman, who were both
treated at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, were related. But many say the motives, if not the
perpetrators, are depressingly familiar.

They are part of a long line of assaults on Sikhs, who are sometimes mistaken for Muslims; on
Muslims; and, more generally, on people perceived as foreigners.

Valerie Kaur, a Sikh American and founder of the interfaith group Groundswell, believes the
reasons for the attacks go beyond religion.

“Turbaned Sikh men are often at the forefront of hate violence on the ground,” she said. “But
that does not mean that all cases are ones where Sikhs are ‘mistaken’ for Muslims. We believe the
deeper issue is that people with brown skin, beards and/or turbans are often not seen as fellow
Americans.”

This month, Stanford University researchers released “Turban Myths,” a study showing that
although almost all turban-wearers in America are Sikh, about 70 percent of Americans misidentify
turban-wearers as Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or Shinto.

The survey also found that nearly half of Americans believe “Sikh” is a sect of Islam, and more
associate the turban with Osama bin Laden than with the Muslim and Sikh alternatives.

Sikhism is a monotheistic religion revealed to Guru Nanak in the 16th century in the Punjab
region of modern-day India and Pakistan. Today, Sikhism is the fifth-largest religion in the world,
with more than 25 million followers.